Album Review: Leonard Cohen - Popular Problems

Popular music was supposed to be a young person’s game but
as it turns out, young people get older and still want to record and perform.
So we have, for example, Tony Bennett’s new collaboration with Lady Gaga, Cheek to Cheek, which recently made the
88-year-old Bennett the oldest living artist ever to have a number one album.
And then there’s this 13th studio CD from Leonard Cohen, who turned
80 two days before the record’s release and is rumored to be planning another
concert tour.

If the tour happens and is as good as this album, it will be
good indeed. Cohen is still writing sparse, intriguing couplets about love,
sex, his Judaic roots, death and the apocalypse. Sometimes profound, sometimes
impenetrable, always fascinating, they are often dark, yet sometimes funny
enough to make you smile. And he’s still singing in the almost impossibly deep,
husky voice that has characterized his music for at least the last quarter
century. Plus, he continues to understand how well that voice sounds alongside
sweet violins and female backing vocals. He still knows how to effortlessly
meld everything from gospel, blues and country to folk, disco and funk. And he
still manages to seem simultaneously confessional and enigmatic.

Nothing here strikes me as being quite on a par with such
classics as “Hallelujah,” "Tower of Song" and “Famous Blue Raincoat” and there are a few
missteps, most notably the bouncy chorus that follows Cohen’s plaintive verse
in “Did I Ever Love You.” But the occasional lapse is easy to forgive alongside
winners like “A Street,” which Cohen wrote some years ago with former
girlfriend Anjani Thomas and which seemingly tells of a relationship in ruins.

If there’s a surprise here, it’s that Sharon Robinson and
the Webb sisters, who have played key roles in Cohen’s recent work, don't show
up at all in the credits. The main collaborator is Patrick Leonard, who shares
songwriting duties for seven of the nine tracks and provides the spare
production. (He also produced Cohen’s last album, Old Ideas, and wrote the emotive music for its most memorable
track, “Going Home.”)

The best news here may be that Cohen shows no signs of
slowing down—at least not any more than he ever has. As he sings on the opening
track, “It’s not because I’m old / It’s not what dying does / I always liked it
slow / Slow is in my blood.” And then there’s the album closer, the gorgeous “You
Got Me Singing,” in which he proclaims, “You got me singing, even though the
world is gone / You got me thinking / I’d like to carry on.”

With an attitude like that and music like this, who knows
what could happen? Maybe one day Cohen will take the record from Tony Bennett for
oldest living person to top the charts.

Jeff Burger (byjeffburger.com), a longtime magazine editor, has written about music, politics, and popular culture for more than 75 periodicals. His books include Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters, Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon, Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches…